Generous Portions and Priced to Attract

SATISFYING FARE State Street Bistro has a small menu but much to offer, like an appetizer of house-cured salmon, below.Credit
Judith Pszenica for The New York Times

IN May of this year, a sunnier time for all new businesses, Joseph Kustra, the owner of Joseph’s Steakhouse in downtown Bridgeport since 2000, opened State Street Bistro on the ground floor of a beautiful, rejuvenated 19th-century building, just a few blocks away from his steakhouse.

I had dinner there twice, on midweek evenings. On both occasions we shared the spacious room with only one other table. According to our waiter, weekends and lunches are busy; but the area doesn’t get that much traffic during the rest of the week.

That’s too bad, because State Street has a lot to offer.

The small menu is more French, than American, bistro, with fairly traditional renderings of classics like onion soup, escargots, mussels marinière, pâté and house-cured salmon. For entrees, there is the obligatory steak au poivre, a choucroute and duck a l’orange, among others.

Our dinners were hearty, uncomplicated and satisfying, and the lunch menu, which I haven’t tried yet, looks equally appealing.

Mussels marinière were cooked in white wine, as is traditional, with garlic and shallot; in France, however, I never tasted the dish garnished with grated lemon zest as it was here, and the sharp citrus taste was wonderfully vibrant, perking up both broth and seafood. (Such a tasty broth demands a spoon, however, and better bread — State Street’s loaf is rather anemic.)

Some of the appetizers just miss excellence. Escargots, served in a warm pastry case with a Pernod butter, were exceptionally tender; unfortunately they were neither garlicky enough nor hot enough to be really excellent. The pâté, served with a large salad and a mustard sauce, was bland tasting. The house-cured salmon, however, a generous layer of delicious, slightly sticky, mild-flavored, thin-sliced salmon, was perhaps the best dish on the menu (although the garnish of capers, red onion and sieved egg threatened to overwhelm the silky fish).

State Street serves a fine rendition of steak au poivre, with an arugula salad that was an appropriate foil to the creamy, well-balanced pepper sauce. The choucroute garni, a favorite of mine, was disappointing — the sauerkraut lacked salt and acidity, and while the cured meats were delicious, the chunks of fresh pork had toughened in the cooking. (Seasoning was generally uneven — the escargots also yearned for salt, while the ratatouille garnish on the lamb chops was over-salted.)

Desserts were a mixed bag too. The chocolate mousse cake and cheesecake were rather dry, and the apples in my tarte Tatin had cooked to applesauce, but the white chocolate crème brûlée was divine.

Photo

Credit
Judith Pszenica for The New York Times

Sometimes State Street mixes the two cultures: an American-style crab cake, dense with seafood, was served atop a mound of that French standard, celery rémoulade (the latter lacked a bit of mustard). The duck à l’orange — a hefty portion of roasted breast and leg — was sauced with a sprightly orange sauce, and accompanied by wild rice.

And there are innovations: I couldn’t quite reconcile the taste of the Caesar salad with its generous shiitake mushroom garnish, but the dressing was so tasty, and the mushrooms so beautifully cooked, I enjoyed it anyway.

An American offering, the Bistro Salad, a large plate of greens with candied walnuts, dried cranberries and crumbled fresh goat cheese — a standard on Connecticut menus — was head and shoulders above its local competition; the greens were very fresh, and neither walnuts nor balsamic dressing were overly sweet.

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Portions at State Street are substantial, and the food is appealingly priced. But if you need more encouragement for a midweek trip into town, the restaurant is handing out coupons for $10 off your table.